Higher Education Green Paper Response from BU – 18h January 2016 Q1: A) What are your views on the potential equality impacts of the proposals, and other plans, that are set out in this consultation? Bournemouth University welcomes the commitment to increasing access to higher education for disadvantaged groups, which runs through all aspects of the Green Paper. With regard to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), we support the proposals that metrics will be broken down and reported by disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups. We believe that there should be further discussion about which groups and indicators are most appropriate for this purpose (see our response to question 4). This approach is likely to create incentives for institutions to focus on a limited set of disadvantaged groups. This may not be the best way to encourage institutions to meet particular local needs or encourage innovation. For that reason, although we agree that the metrics themselves will be useful, they need to be accompanied by contextual information as described in our response to question 2. With regard to the section on provider exit, we wish to highlight that more effort may be needed to protect and support particular groups of students if their course is discontinued. For example, some students may have chosen institutions based on their location to able to live at home or near family or services while studying, and in this case, transferring to another institution may not be particularly straightforward. B) Are there any equality impacts that we have not considered? If so, please provide any further relevant evidence. No. Q2: How can information from the TEF be used to better inform student and employer decision making? Please quantify these benefits as far as you can. Students and employers are already able to access large amounts of quantitative data about institutions, including information in league tables, although we agree that this information is not always consistent or easy to use. Our experience shows that undergraduate students select their university based on a range of factors, including for example, their experience at open days. This and other qualitative information appears to be more relevant than the quantitative data that is already provided.1 We therefore believe that the TEF will be most beneficial to students if it provided more robust qualitative data, rather than purely quantitative data. It is also essential that any comparative information is accompanied by appropriate contextual information and that suitable benchmarks are given to enable the information to be useful and relevant. For example, context would include size, geographical location, mix of subjects, local demographic factors, student background and prior achievement, and factors relating to specific employment outcomes (e.g. national salary ranges for health professionals, teachers etc.). We do agree that more consistent and comparable data should be provided, and that it will be particularly useful for employers and regulators, and certain groups of students, in particular post-graduate and international students. We suggest that as far as possible, the TEF should rely on existing measures and use existing processes, and avoid re-creating parallel systems. Please see our response to question 7. 1 Bournemouth University’s own evidence gathering shows that few students are aware of the Unistats tool or confirm that they have used it (when asked, typically less than a third of our open day visitors stated that they knew of the tool or made use of it). In addition, Bournemouth University web analytics data for the year ending 31 August 2015 showed that of the 670,000 sessions which involved a view of an Undergraduate course, just 1.7% (11,000) viewed the ‘Course Information Stats’ page which provides the supplementary information to the data presented in the Key Information Set (KIS) widget. When questioned about this and the lack of “click through” to Unistats using the KIS widget during the focus groups prospective students felt that the information that was available directly from the course pages on the Bournemouth University website was sufficient.
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